Texting Can Actually Make You Temporarily Deaf

If you've ever tried dashing off a text in the middle of a conversation with a friend (or, worse, your teacher or your mom), there's a pretty good chance you missed half of what they just said. You might think you're able to focus on listening to the conversation and typing out a quick sentence on your phone, but that's actually too much for your brain to handle.

The British study is small — just 13 subjects — but the findings are super interesting. Researchers conducted brain scans on participants who were listening to sounds when they were asked to quickly decipher some ambiguous-looking letters. In those split-second moments when they had to decipher the letters, scientists found the participants' brains' responses to sound was reduced. In other words, they really couldn't hear what was going on when they were focused on other tasks.

Dr. Maria Chait, a professor of neuroscience who worked on the study, pointed out that using your phone is a prime source of inattentional deafness.

So, next time your mom gets frustrated that you're not paying attention when she talks, you can explain that it's not totally your fault. It's inattentional deafness! Science backs you up!

The only problem? Now that you're aware of exactly how your brain works, you have no excuse not to put down the phone and pay attention when someone's trying to speak to you. It's just good manners!